I love Beijing

There's something about this city that never fails to amaze me. It's partially the history, and the fact that I was hanging out at the Temple of Heaven park yesterday, built just a few years ago in 1407. It's also the sheer size and magnitude of the city, with it's five ring roads and it's 8 subway lines. Oh, and don't forget that with a population of 16 million, mass transit takes on a whole new form.

Maybe it is the memories of my months here in 2007 as a student which were not only marked by drinking large quantities of Tsingtao beer, but also with exploring and becoming familiar with the unfamiliar. I think I'm on my way to making plenty of new Beijing and China memories though.

I've been staying with my friend Cathy who is doing the abroad program I did 2.5 years ago and staying in the dorms this weekend, a mere 2 floors exactly above my old room. We ate at the famed Medicine House when I got in- it was still as good as I remember it.

Friday I went to say hello to a lot of my old teachers and program directors. I totally surprised them which was funny. They also find it amusing that most of my group of friends from Beida are back or trying to come back to China.

Yesterday I dragged cathy out to the Temple of Heaven park because I had never been before. It was really big and filled with old people singing, dancing, playing cards, and exercising. The prayer halls were really beautiful and very colorfully restored. Then I took Cathy over to one of my favorite areas, nanluoguxiang, to eat at a little southern Chinese restaurant (two little southern girls like to complain about northern food and it's lack of flavor) which is one of my favorites in Beijing.

We ended up meeting her friends and KTV'ing until midnight too, so it was a pretty China day yesterday. I'm going to take her to Lush for breakfast (I don't know how she hasn't been yet!) and then we are going to the Silk Market, of course.

I have an early morning train back to Qingdao tomorrow, officially marking the end of my China vacation and the start of my American one.

Thanks for the blue skies, Beijing!

Yatah!

My itouch volume button fixed itself and I no longer have an annoying
box on top of the screen! Plus I can actually control the volume!

Yippee!!

I forgot to mention this earlier but I also managed to buy a camera
power cord and only missed one day of photo opportunities. Knock on
wood, but I think my tech problems are over!

I mean, minus the lack of phone money thing, but that's actually my own
fault.

Victory! (And a blister to prove it)

Tiger Leaping Gorge was amazing.  The first day was pretty rough, especially the 28 Bends path which was pretty much an upward climb to 2670m complete with 28 hairpin turns for about 2 hours straight.  From there, it was pretty much downhill with beautiful views of the mountains and rapids. 

We stayed overnight at a hostel called Halfway House which is well known for its prime location and scenic toilets.  They had open-air squatty potties (troughs, actually) but they faced the mountains and made for an exciting bathroom visit.  There was also a terrace (appropriately labeled "Inspiration Terrace") where the three of us watched the stars at night and listened to the gorge.  The sunrise was also beautiful and I wish I had been able to fully capture how beautiful it was.

The next day we hiked to Tina's Guesthouse from which we hiked down into the gorge itself.  There were two sets of ladders, the longer one having about 40+ steps that were vertical and quite rickety!  We walked along the edge of the gorge and managed to see two of the three 'tiger jumps' before we turned back because of an aggressive beggar woman.  It was really great to go from the top of the mountains to the very bottom in two days. 

The last night we stayed at Sean's guesthouse, the oldest one in the valley and the most famed.  We spent the night looking at the stars and relaxing by the fire.  My legs were really sore (hiking down means hiking up!) and I have a huge blister on my right foot.  When we got back to Mama Naxi's the next day, Jenna and I immedeately did laundry and boy, was our wash water black!  We had to run three cycles before we felt the water was clean enough to put our clothes in spin dry.  This is also the first time we've done laundry in about two weeks. 

Zaijian, pengyoumen

Sean left for Xishuangban'na yesterday evening and we were quite sad to see him leave, but excited that he's going to backpack his way through the Philipines and other places before ending up in New Zealand.  Jenna and I were very fortunate to find such a positive and easy-going travel buddy!  Jenna (and Andy) left for Chengdu a few hours ago and will return to Qingdao before going to Beijing and then on to Taiwan, her new home and job. 

I leave for Kunming tonight on an overnight train to spend a day before I fly out to Beijing on the 28th to meet up with Cathy and do my Beijing thing.  I'm a little frustrated right now though, because you can only add money to your cell phone from the home province and I am a little SOL right now when it comes to calls, but can still text.  China makes no sense sometimes (or a lot, actually). 

America in NINE days!

Tiger Leaping Gorge

Lijiang is pretty but is essentially a series of shops selling trinkets. Sean and Andy got in before the amazing Mama Naxi's dinner(I destroyed the whole fish) and Evan got in later. The two of them
aren't going up to the Gorge with us, as Andy is still recovering from the 拉肚子.

Sean, Jenna and I are heading out to the Three Gorges Dam in a little  while and hope to make it to the halfway point this evening after  climbing up to the top at 2670m and the 28 bends.

Adventuretime!

Goodbye Dali

Dali is apparently known for these three golden pagodas at the foot of the mountain, so Sean and I went to check them out yesterday (Jenna has a cold...eek) but I found them underwhelming. First of all, they were built recently to add something to the area and you can't even climb to the top of the thing. It's also a whopping 171元 to even enter the complex. We walked up behind the thing and a bit up the mountain to get a good view of Dali and the lake. There are frequent checkpoints on the mountain to make sure you don't  have a lighter because the forests are so dry. There aren't any breaks
on the mountain either!

One of our new friends, Andy, had a bad case of the 拉肚子 (travelers diarrhea). Poor kid likely ate a bad western steak (eat Chinese!) and  was suffering for about 18 hours before I gave him some Cipro. He was  back in action when we left and Sean, Evan and Andy are coming up to
Lijiang tomorrow.

Jenna and I took the bus up to Lijiang this afternoon and are now in our new hostel, Mama Naxi's. Mama herself cooked us a family style dinner, as she does every night, for only 15元 each person! We got four plates of food, bananas and tea. She is so friendly and adorable! We also just witnessed her sending off some people with more bananas, extra water, and lots of hugs and kisses. This hostel also has several dogs running around, but only one bathroom/shower that we know of. Lonely planet wins again!

We're going to explore the city tomorrow. America in two weeks!

Dali: Day One

We took a train from Kunming to Dali because it was cheaper, but took a whopping 8 hours versus the 5-6 it would have in a bus. I prefer trains though, because you can walk around and its not as bumpy as a road would be (don't forget that I got the worst food poisoning in China on a bus in the Shanxi province. Long distance buses are kind of ruined for me). We got into "New Dali", actually Xiaguan, and took a bus to the Ancient City of Dali, "Old Dali". Our hostel is the sister hostel to the one where we stayed in Kunming. The Dali Hump is awesome and we are in an eight-person dorm with heated blankets and a tiled bathroom with a huge overhead showerhead. It's brand new and is pretty great.

The first night we ate at a place called Mr. Li's cafe where we had one of my favorite Yunnan dishes-- the giant hashbrown. Yunnan has some really great potato dishes but the giant hashbrown is the best! We also had some fried yak cheese which was sprinkled with sugar and was very tasty.

Dali is very beautiful and is contained by a wall and several gates. The streets are all cobblestone and there are some cool streams going through the walking streets. It's pretty touristy and the streets are lined with restaurants, cafes, and bars.

Climbing Cangshan

Yesterday we got up and hiked two hours up a mountain backs up to Old Dali. Considering we were already at 6000ft elevaton, we took a lot of breaks! We got up to a temple where we ate lunch made by a really nice man who apparently also made good moonshine. Then we walked for three hours along a paved road that went along the contours of the mountain and we were able to see all the beautiful streams and crevices of the mountain. At the end of the path we took a cablecar down and it was amazing to see how far we had gotten and how high up we were. Dali also has a huge lake near it and the views were spectacular.

We roll in expat packs

The crazy kids from the train wanted us to meet them because it was their last night in Dali so we headed out after a much-needed shower. They had befriended a Chinese local named Peter who had led them to this old man's house in Dali. The old guy currently cuts hair, but has photos in his shop of himself as a Red Guard, playing his violin, and in various places around China. He apparently used to play in the Beijing opera and has played for Mao too!

He taught us how to play the er hu (the Chinese two-string instrument) which was really neat. The two strings were the C-string and the G-string and the fingering patterns were the same as on a cello. It was kind of tricky but really cool one I got the hand of playing a scale on it. The old guy's erhu had so much resin build-up on it and the place that his bow rested had carved an indent into the wood! This was one of the coolest experiences I've hever had in China and I have a few videos of him playing.

I should also note that we picked up two English teachers who are actually teaching outside of Qingdao. One is from England and the other is from Canada and they are 18! Their boss sounds really sketchy and actually fabricated their university degrees for the police.

The expat pack then wandered around on the streets looking for a restaurant to eat at, but we wandered into the red-light district. This was when the train kids decided to pull out their medical grade alcohol and teach everyone to blow fire. Sean blew a huge fireball and I got it on video.

Then we found a chuanr place and sat in the back room until 3am eating some good chuanr and fries cooked in chuanr spice (amazing!). It was a really random night that followed a great day. Jenna's feeling a little bit under the weather today so we're going to walk around the town and just take it easy.

Till next time--

Welcome to Yunnan

We left Guilin on a rainy day and managed to find Sean right before he attempted to buy a train ticket with pictures (three stick figures) and a lonely planet phrasebook. The sleeper train was great- our car wasn't full and we met a cool group of kids who had been working at a rock climbing company in Yangshuo. They were also totally nuts (one dropped her phone down the toilet on the train) but made for good company on the train ride. We stayed up pretty late drinking Snow beers (!!!) in the dining car (then another one of them tried to steal a train conductor's hat and then after I woke him up, tried to return it naked).

I bought a camera charger yesterday, so photos of the trip onward will be plentiful. Kunming is a really chill city and it's warm during the day and a litle brisk at night. We walked around the public park yesterday and it was filled with ladies dancing, old guys singing, and kids playing. The funniest part was when a little girl yelled "外国 人!" (foreigners!) at the top of her lungs at Sean and Jenna. Her parents laughed and I nearly died! Then we had a really amazing Yunnan dinner (lonely planet never fails!) complete with fried yak cheese, prawns in a foil bag lit tableside, and chili battered fish.

This morning we got up early to head over to the Stone Forest in Shilin, about 120km southwest of Kunming. However our early start was negated when we took the wrong bus and then decided to buy our train tickets to Dali.

Ok so... the train station is already a zoo and it's one month until Spring Festival. There are huge gazebo tents and portable dividers outside the train station to sell tickets. There are even army guys with batons to direct people lining up to the next open window! I'm so glad I'm getting out of here next month.

Anyway, the Stone Forest took about 2.5 hours to get to and was also a whopping 170元 per ticket. The place was overrun with Chinese tour groups, complete with matching hats and whistles. The perifery was amazing though and the park is like looking at another planet. Imagine pointy grey rocks protruding from the ground... covering many hills.

We met a group of Germans that had been on the road for months, driving from Germany, through Iran, Pakistan, Tibet, Krygystan and now China. They had an orange van and this huge red sandcrawler thing which they have been driving around. Theyre going to Laos, Burma, and
Vietnam next, so watch out! Try orangetrotter.de or project-Asia.com to follow their travels.

This leg of the adventure was fun and a lot slower paced than before with pleasant weather and random people. tomorrow we take a morning train to Dali and should be there in the evening. Happy MLK day!

I'm exhausted!

This morning, Jenna, Sean and I headed out on our bikes to Moon Hill. It's basically a giant hill with a hole in the middle. We blimbed up to the top, which had an amazing view of the countryside. It realy was spectacular. We even found Caerin, the Irish guy from Guilin, up there!

Then we biked for 20km to Puxi before we realized there was nothing out there. We were also starving and wouldn't have been able to bike back before nighttime... Plus I apparently found the last bus back to Yangshuo, so we headed back completely exhausted. It was a bizarre little day and I was so close to just calling it quits towards the end. Plus, my jeans now have a rip in the butt! Considering that I only have two pairs with me, this really sucks. I'm going to have to buy some Chinese girl pants soon.

Tomorrow we (Sean will probably be with us the rest of the way) will take an 18 hour long train to Kunming.

On to Yunnan!

Oops

I grabbed my US cell phone charger instead of my camera charger. Good thing Jenna has a EOS! I would have been stealing her photos anyway.

Yangshuo: Part One

Taking the bus to Yangshuo was funny- the lady at the hostel told us to wait on a curb for the bus. So we were waiting and thought we were in the wrong place until a bus came slowly towards us, with a woman hanging out the open door yelling "Yangshuo! Yangshuo!"

Our hostel here, the Giggling Tree, is really unique and is owned by a Dutch couple that bought a farm village 4km outside the main town and converted it into a hostel. We're in the middle of a field and
surrounded by the karst peaks. It's a refreshing change from the tourist trap that is West Street.

Last night we just walked around West Street, where I had an amazing veggie burger (with cheese and fries was only 18rmb!) and drank some crappy local beer. We had a hard time finding a cab afterward so we bargained and hopped on the back of a motorcycle to come back!

Today we met a woman who teaches in Shenzhen and her parents who are staying in the hostel. We took a bus up to Yangdi and then walked a trail for 3 hours along the Li River. It was beautiful and surreal. Pictures don't do this place justice. Then we took a bamboo river raft down to Xingping, which has the Karst scenery that is pictured on the back of the 20rmb note. No, we didn't have a 20rmb note.

Tonight we ate at a really great vegetarian restaurant and are just hanging out at the hostel now. I love staying at hostels because you meet the nicest people that make great day trip buddies. Tomorrow we're going to hike another trail nearby that ends at a great Karst mountain but will probably use bikes for most of it.

On another note... something is wrong with my iPod and the volume up button is jammed so the annoying square in the middle of my screen won't go away and I had to lock my sound. I miss my pals at the apple store.

First Stop: Guilin

Jenna and I arrived in Guilin late Sunday night and settled into our hostel (Wada hostel, if you're ever down here).  Our dorm was really nice and we even had our own little bathroom!  Monday morning we woke up and walked to the market behind the hostel to grab some breakfast.  I bought four yummy baozi for 1kuai and then we walked over to McDonalds, where I discovered that my backpack had been opened and my wallet had been stolen! 

We ran back to the alley, but the baozi woman said that she remembered me putting my wallet back in my bag.  I started panicking, running around the alley and was just about to give up and start calling my banks when I checked my backpack again.  My bag had been opened again and the thief had put my wallet back in my bag, without the cash, but everything else intact!  I'm almost more angry that they snuck by me twice, but I guess its better that I lost 300RMB rather than 300RMB + ATM cards.  So that was my exciting morning.  Grr! 

Jenna and I then headed to the Solitary Peak, this giant stone that is the highest peak in Guilin.  We climbed to the top and even though it was a cloudy day, the view of Guilin was spectacular.  We also walked around the park, that was actually Guilin Normal University.  Those lucky students have such a nice campus!  When we headed back to our hostel, we had a new roommate named Caerin from Ireland.  The three of us then went to the Sun and Moon Pagodas to see them illuminated at night, which was also very pretty. 

We ate at a Northeastern China restaurant which was alright and then we went to a random Irish bar (Caerin's request) and were accosted by some Chinese men.  They always want to speak in English with foreigners, buy foreigners drinks, and then 'gan bei' every five seconds. It was a rather funny night, if anything, but definitely not what I would call "cool" Chinese people. 

We're headed to Yangshuo this afternoon where we will be staying at a hostel called The Giggling Tree, which is owned by a Dutch couple who basically bought a village and turned it into a hostel. It should be interesting. 

Till next time~

Adventure Itinerary

My grades are done!  I slogged through and only failed five students.  There were a whole bunch that got by with a 60 or 65, because I'm merciful, but I failed the kids that never even bothered to show up but once or twice.  I'm going to turn in my grades tomorrow and then it's off on vacation with Jenna.  It's the trip I've been dreaming about doing since I left China and I am very excited to travel down to the southwest region.  So here goes...

Jenna & Alison's January Adventure

January 10-12
Guilin

January 13-15
Yangshuo

January 16-18
Kunming

January 19-21
Dali

January 22-23
Lijiang

January 23-25
Tiger Leaping Gorge

January 26-27
Go back to Lijiang, take train to Kunming

January 28-31
Beijing

February 1
Take train back to Qingdao

February 4
Flight to AMERICA!

I'll have wifi at the hostels I'm staying at and will be posting via email.  Since I went to Yangshuo two years ago, I knew I wanted to come back.  This time we will not be staying on the super-touristy West Street, but instead will be staying at a village-turned-hostel about 3km away from the Yangshuo hotspot.

I've also been very interested in the Yunnan province for about two years now and am looking forward to exploring Naxi villages and seeing many Buddhist temples.  The Tiger Leaping Gorge, of course, is bound to be the high point of the trip and will take us 3 days to hike there and back.  I am also looking forward to spending time in Dali and seeing the famous Stone Forest.

Exciting stuff over here!  Until the next post...